This remodel negotiates the owner’s desire for a modern home with the municipality’s desire to maintain the home’s ‘historic’ character. To satisfy these potentially conflicting interests, Sidell Pakravan’s strategy restores the house’s shell while completely gutting the interior to achieve greater connections to the landscape beyond and between previously disconnected levels on the interior.

At the exterior, new doors and windows with black frames hint at the elegant and restrained aesthetic that guides the design throughout. Similarly, a new cantilevered deck at the rear and new French doors at the front create connections to outside that echo the new spatial openness of the reorganized interior.

The original home, although two stories, functioned like a single story home. To remedy this, the primary formal move was to remove the center of the home and insert a new, open stair that visually and physically connects the two levels. To take advantage of this, the lower level was enlarged and completely refinished to provide two new bedrooms, a music room, a playroom, and a bathroom. Similarly, the upper level was completed updated with a new master suite, an updated bathroom, new finishes in the main living spaces, and a new Henrybuilt Kitchen.